Management Speak
Communication Miscalibration: The Price Leaders Pay for Not Sharing Enough
Francis Flynn & Chelsea Lide
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Leaders may be seen by their followers as miscalibrating the quantity of their communication -- sharing too much or too little. We propose that leaders are more likely to be seen as under-communicating than over-communicating, even though under-communication is more heavily penalized. In Study 1a, we examine 2,717 qualitative comments from archived leadership assessments and find that leaders are nearly ten times as likely to be criticized for under-communicating than over-communicating. In Study 1b, we obtain further evidence of this bias using a representative sample of U.S. adults. In Study 2, we manipulate communication (mis)calibration, showing that leaders who under-communicate are viewed as less qualified for a leadership role because they are viewed as less empathic. In Study 3, we use separate measures of employee perceptions of their manager's communication as well as their preferences. When there is a lack of congruence between perceived and preferred communication, employees judge their leaders as lacking empathy and, in turn, leadership ability.
What Makes Agility Fragile? A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Rigidity
Jin Li, Arijit Mukherjee & Luis Vasconcelos
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present a novel explanation of why organizations tend to lose their agility over time despite their efforts to foster worker initiative in adapting to local information. Worker initiative ensures efficiency but requires strong incentives. When incentives are relational and the firm faces shocks to its credibility, it may adopt standardized work processes that ignore local information but yield satisfactory (though suboptimal) performance. The adoption of such standardized processes helps the firm survive the current shock but inflicts inefficiencies in the future. Although the firm may recover, it becomes more vulnerable to future shocks, and consequently, more reliant on the standardized work procedures.
Fostering perceptions of authenticity via sensitive self-disclosure
Li Jiang et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Leaders' perceived authenticity -- the sense that leaders are acting in accordance with their "true self" -- is associated with positive outcomes for both employees and organizations alike. How might leaders foster this impression? We show that sensitive self-disclosure, in the form of revealing weaknesses, makes leaders come across as authentic (Studies 1 and 2) -- because observers infer that the discloser is not engaging in strategic self-presentation (Study 3). Further, the authenticity gains of sensitive self-disclosure have positive downstream consequences, such as enhancing employees' desire to work with the leader (Studies 4A and 4B). And, as our conceptual account predicts, these benefits emerge when the revealed weakness is made voluntarily (as opposed to by requirement; Study 5), and are more pronounced if the disclosure is made by a relatively high-status person (Study 6). We also present anecdotal field evidence (Study 7) consistent with the causal effects identified in Studies 1-6.
Corporate Hierarchy and Organizational Learning: Member Turnover, Code Change, and Innovation in the Multiunit Firm
John Joseph, Luke Rhee & Alex James Wilson
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines how recombinant innovation is affected by member turnover and organizational learning within a corporate hierarchy. Prior work has overlooked the role of organizational structure in organizational learning, focusing instead on the knowledge provided by individual new hires or on the disruption caused by individual departures. We address this gap by applying March's [March JG (1991) Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organ. Sci. 2(1):71-87.] mutual learning model to a corporate hierarchy. In doing so, we theorize how the contributions of corporate staff to socializing new employees and to learning from the organizational code may differ from those of the organization's subunit members. Empirically, we examine the learning effects of aggregate corporate and subunit arrivals and departures on novel recombinant innovation by subunits. Using 24 years of Motorola company directories, we construct membership turnover measures for corporate and subunit employees and exploit patent data to capture recombinant innovation. Our results suggest that, whereas the influx of new ideas through arrivals may be critical, breaking the pattern of inertial behavior through departures is more important for recombinant innovation. Corporate departures matter most for recombinant innovation, a result that reflects not only corporate staff's slower individual learning from the organizational code but also its ability to update that code more quickly. In supplementary analyses, we find different effects for technical and nontechnical staff and internal and external arrivals, as well as demonstrate the mutual learning mechanism using internal corporate documents to capture code change. Our study has strong implications for theories of organizational learning, strategic human capital, organization design, and innovation.
The rise of robots increases job insecurity and maladaptive workplace behaviors: Multimethod evidence
Kai Chi Yam et al.
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Robots are transforming the nature of human work. Although human-robot collaborations can create new jobs and increase productivity, pundits often warn about how robots might replace humans at work and create mass unemployment. Despite these warnings, relatively little research has directly assessed how laypeople react to robots in the workplace. Drawing from cognitive appraisal theory of stress, we suggest that employees exposed to robots (either physically or psychologically) would report greater job insecurity. Six studies - including two pilot studies, an archival study across 185 U.S. metropolitan areas (Study 1), a preregistered experiment conducted in Singapore (Study 2), an experience-sampling study among engineers conducted in India (Study 3), and an online experiment (Study 4) - find that increased exposure to robots leads to increased job insecurity. Study 3 also reveals that this robot-related job insecurity is in turn positively associated with burnout and workplace incivility. Study 4 reveals that self-affirmation is a psychological intervention that might buffer the negative effects of robot-related job insecurity. Our findings hold across different cultures and industries, including industries not threatened by robots.
Dispersion in Dispersion: Measuring Establishment-Level Differences in Productivity
Cindy Cunningham et al.
Review of Income and Wealth, forthcoming
Abstract:
We describe new experimental productivity dispersion statistics, Dispersion Statistics on Productivity (DiSP), jointly produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Census Bureau, that complement the official BLS industry-level productivity statistics. The BLS has a long history of producing industry-level productivity statistics, which represent the average establishment-level productivity within industries when appropriately weighted. These statistics cannot, however, tell us about the variation in productivity levels across establishments within those industries. Dispersion in productivity across businesses can provide information about the nature of competition and frictions within sectors and the sources of rising wage inequality across businesses. DiSP data show enormous differences in productivity across establishments within industries in the manufacturing sector. We find substantial variation in dispersion across industries, increasing dispersion from 1997 to 2016, and countercyclical total factor productivity dispersion. We hope DiSP will enable further research into understanding productivity differences across industries and establishments and over time.
Does Job Satisfaction Rise and Fall with the Economy? Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Experimental Evidence That Job Satisfaction Increases during Recessions
Emily Bianchi, Chris Martin & Ren Li
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
While recessions negatively influence many aspects of working life, we propose that they will positively affect job satisfaction. We argue that during bad economic times, alternative jobs will be less salient, and people will regard their own jobs as more satisfying. We test these predictions in three studies. Study 1 (N = 23,335) utilizes a large cross-sectional survey of American adults collected over four decades and finds that job satisfaction rises during recessions and falls during booms. Study 2 (N = 12,859) replicates this result using a large longitudinal survey of British adults and finds that job satisfaction rises and falls with the economy, even within the same people. Finally, Study 3 (N = 512) uses an experimental design and finds that when the economy falters, alternative jobs become less salient, which mediates the relationship between economic conditions and job satisfaction. While past work has shown that job satisfaction is influenced by situations within organizations, the current findings suggest that conditions outside of organizations can also shape how people affectively evaluate their jobs.
Effect of mood and worker incentives on workplace productivity
Decio Coviello et al.
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the causal effect of mood on the productivity of call-center workers. Mood is measured through an online "mood questionnaire" which the workers are encouraged to fill out daily. We find that better mood actually decreases worker productivity for workers whose compensation is largely fixed. The negative effect of mood is attenuated for workers whose compensation is based on performance (high-powered incentives). This finding holds both at a correlational level and in two IV settings, where mood is instrumented for by weather or, alternatively, by whether the local professional sports team played/won the day before. We rule out a number of threats to the exclusion restrictions, and discuss the mechanisms that could generate our findings.
Wearing Your Worth at Work: The Consequences of Employees' Daily Clothing Choices
Joseph Kim, Brian Holtz & Ryan Vogel
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do the clothes worn to work impact employees' thoughts and behaviors? Despite the universal necessity of wearing clothes and the fact that employees make decisions about this daily, organizational scholars have not yet addressed this question. We integrated sociometer and enclothed cognition theories to propose that aspects of clothing - their aesthetics, conformity, and uniqueness - hold symbolic meanings that have implications for employees' state self-esteem and subsequent task and relational behaviors (i.e., goal progress, social avoidance). We first provide evidence for the nature of the symbolic meanings associated with these three dimensions of work clothing in a set of within-person experimental studies. Then, the results of a 10-day field study of employees from four organizations generally supported our predictions, showing that daily clothing aesthetics and uniqueness had effects on state self-esteem and downstream behavioral consequences. The effects of daily clothing conformity emerged under the condition of greater interaction frequency with others in the workplace. Our manuscript contributes to both major theories from which we draw and further offers theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on organizational clothing.
Applicant faking warnings: Are they really effective?
Justin Feeney, Richard Goffin & Shadi Beshai
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evidence suggests that a large percentage of job applicants fake their responses on personality tests. This faking has the potential to undermine the value and validity of personality tests in the selection context. Faking warnings are messages that try to dissuade applicants from faking by warning them about potential consequences and have been shown to be effective in reducing faking in some studies. We developed new faking warnings that leverage accountability and morality theory to reduce applicant faking. Accordingly, we examined the efficacy of our faking warnings in reducing applicant faking in one applied sample. We examined 534 mTurk participants who believed they were being considered for a real employment opportunity for a remote customer service position. Compared to participants not interested in the job, participants who were interested in the job had significantly more favorable personality scores. After informing participants that the position was fictitious and asking them to fill out the same personality measure as honestly as possible, the same previously interested participants received significantly less favorable personality scores. However, there were no differences in faking across the different faking warning conditions, suggesting the faking warnings were ineffective.
Jolted: How task-based jolts disrupt status conferral by impacting higher and lower status individuals' generosity
Elijah Wee, Rellie Derfler-Rozin & Jennifer Carson Marr
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite growing evidence that the status conferred to individuals in organizations can change, few theoretical accounts explain when and how established patterns of status conferral are disrupted. We develop a theory of "task-based jolts"-organizational-level events that alter group tasks and goals in a way that requires employees to adjust the way they work-as a significant catalyst to disrupt status conferral in an existing hierarchy. We employed a multimethod design across two empirical studies (Study 1-quasifield experiment; Study 2-yoked experiment) and found that jolts are appraised differently by higher and lower status individuals, and as such, the jolt has contrasting implications for their generosity toward their coworkers and ultimately the status conferred to them. When employees' initial status is higher, they appraise a task-based jolt as self-threatening, undermining their concern for others and their generosity, which ultimately causes them to lose status in the immediate aftermath of the jolt. Conversely, when employees' initial status is lower, they appraise a task-based jolt as more of an opportunity, increasing their belief that they can contribute and their generosity, which ultimately causes them to gain status in the immediate aftermath of the jolt. Our findings offer valuable insights into how and why organizational-level change can indirectly influence microlevel interpersonal behaviors (generosity) that, in turn, affect status hierarchies within the organization.